Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, data, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., bandwidth and transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
Generally, a wireless multiple-access communication system can simultaneously support communication for multiple wireless terminals. Each terminal communicates with one or more base stations via transmissions on the forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the terminals, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from the terminals to the base stations. This communication link may be established via a single-in-single-out, multiple-in-signal-out or a multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) system.
A MIMO system employs multiple (NT) transmit antennas and multiple (NR) receive antennas for data transmission. A MIMO channel formed by the NT transmit and NR receive antennas may be decomposed into NS independent channels, which are also referred to as spatial channels; where NS≦min{NT, NR}. Each of the NS independent channels corresponds to a dimension. The MIMO system can provide improved performance (e.g., higher throughput and/or greater reliability) if the additional dimensionalities created by the multiple transmit and receive antennas are utilized.
A MIMO system supports time division duplex (TDD) and frequency division duplex (FDD) systems. In a TDD system, the forward and reverse link transmissions are on the same frequency region so that the reciprocity principle allows the estimation of the forward link channel from the reverse link channel. This enables the access point to extract transmit beam-forming gain on the forward link when multiple antennas are available at the access point.
In a wireless communication system such as an OFDMA system, it may be desireable to estimate the response of a wireless channel from a transmitter to a receiver. The channel estimate may be used for various purposes such as data detection, time synchronization, frequency correction, spatial processing, rate selection, and so on. Channel estimation may be performed by transmitting a pilot signal containing pilot symbols that are known a priori by both the transmitter and receiver. The receiver can then estimate the channel gains as a ratio of the received pilot symbols over the known pilot symbols.
The pilot signal may be impaired by both noise and interference. These impairments can degrade the quality of the channel estimate obtained by the receiver based on the received pilot signal. The noise can come from various sources such as the wireless channel, receiver properties, and so on. Noise impairment can normally be addressed by transmitting the pilot signal in a proper manner and/or for a sufficient period of time such that the receiver can obtain the desired quality for the channel estimate. The interference can result from multiple transmitters transmitting their pilot signals simultaneously. These transmitters may be for different base stations in the system, different antennas of the same base station, and so on. The pilot signal from each transmitter may act as interference to the pilot signals from other transmitters. This pilot interference degrades the quality of the channel estimate.
It is often desired to estimate the channel and the level of interference. On the forward link (FL), common pilot symbols have been used. In the OFDMA system, such common pilot symbols may be scattered over the entire bandwidth shared by all the users. However, channel estimation can invoke a large number of computations and may impact system performance and resource allocation.
Further, in conventional receiver architectures, a demodulator and a demapper are often utilized and have been integrated into a single device even though the two devices may operate independently. For example, the demodulator and the demapper operate on two different timelines; the demapper may operate on a sub-packet timeline and the demodulator may operate on a tone-by-tone or tile-by-tile timeline. As a result, a need exists for decoupling the demodulator and the demapper in a receiver architecture via the use of a shared buffer resulting in two independent devices.